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Institute of Astronomy

 

Stellar flares may hamper search for life in promising star system

Astronomy News - Tue, 24/06/2025 - 10:15

Astronomers have been trying to detect atmospheres on planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1, but bursts of radiation from the star make this challenging

Why are the physical constants of the universe so perfect for life?

Astronomy News - Tue, 24/06/2025 - 10:14

Conditions in our little pocket of the universe seem to be just right for life - and the much-debated anthropic principle forces us to wonder why

Vera Rubin Observatory has already found thousands of new asteroids

Astronomy News - Tue, 24/06/2025 - 10:14

In just 10 hours of observing the night sky, the powerful new telescope detected more than 2000 new asteroids, including a few that will pass near Earth

Rubin Observatory reveals first images

Astronomy News - Tue, 24/06/2025 - 09:52

The Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the US National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science, has released its first imagery, showing cosmic phenomena at an unprecedented scale.

In just over 10 hours of test observations, the NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory has already captured millions of galaxies and Milky Way stars and thousands of asteroids. The imagery is a small preview of the Rubin Observatory’s upcoming 10-year scientific mission to explore and understand some of the universe's biggest mysteries.

Located on a mountaintop in Chile, the Rubin Observatory will repeatedly scan the sky for 10 years and create an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of our universe. The region in central Chile is favoured for astronomical observations because of its dry air and dark skies, and allows for an ideal view of the Milky Way’s centre.

The facility is set to achieve ‘first light,’ or make the first scientific observations of the Southern Hemisphere’s sky using its 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope, on 4 July.

UK astronomers, including from the University of Cambridge, are celebrating their role in the most ambitious sky survey to date.

“We will be looking at the universe in a way that we have never done before, and this exploration is bound to throw up surprises that we never imagined,” said Professor Hiranya Peiris from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, and a builder of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration. 

Enabled by an investment of £23 million from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), UK astronomers and software developers have been preparing the hardware and software needed to analyse the petabytes of data that the survey will produce to enable groundbreaking science that will enhance our understanding of the universe.

The UK is the second largest international contributor to the multinational project, putting UK astronomers at the forefront when it comes to exploiting this unique window on the Universe.

The UK is also playing a significant role in the management and processing of the unprecedented amounts of data. The UK will host one of three international data facilities and process around 1.5 million images, capturing around 10 billion stars and galaxies. When complete, the full 10-year survey is expected to rack up 500 petabytes of date – the same storage as half-a-million 4K Hollywood movies.

The UK’s science portal for the international community is capable of connecting around 1,500 astronomers with UK Digital Research Infrastructure to support the exploitation of this uniquely rich and detailed view of the Universe.

More than two decades in the making, Rubin is the first of its kind: its mirror design, camera size and sensitivity, telescope speed, and computing infrastructure are each in an entirely new category. Over the next 10 years, Rubin will perform the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) using the LSST Camera and the Simonyi Survey Telescope.

By repeatedly scanning the sky for 10 years, the observatory will deliver a treasure trove of discoveries: asteroids and comets, pulsating stars, and supernova explosions. Science operations are expected to start towards the end of 2025.

"I can’t wait to explore the first LSST catalogues - revealing the faintest dwarf galaxies and stellar streams swarming through the Milky Way’s halo," said Professor Vasily Belokurov from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, member of LSST:UK. "A new era of galactic archaeology is beginning!”

“UK researchers have been contributing to the scientific and technical preparation for the Rubin LSST for more than ten years,” said Professor Bob Mann from the University of Edinburgh, LSST:UK Project Leader. “These exciting First Look images show that everything is working well and reassure us that we have a decade’s worth of wonderful data coming our way, with which UK astronomers will do great science.”

Hiranya Peiris is a Fellow of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. 

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a new scientific facility that will bring the night sky to life like never before using the largest camera ever built, has revealed its ‘first look’ images at the start of its 10-year survey of the cosmos.

NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin ObservatoryTrifid nebula (top right) and the Lagoon nebula


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Tue 01 Jul 11:15: Title TBC

Next External Talks - Mon, 23/06/2025 - 12:04
Title TBC

The presentation will open with some reflections on the early part of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, where questions asked about engineering realities constraining science aspirations were raised. Early encounters between Scientists and Engineers considered Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) as one of the constraints. Some formative developments of this specific Radio Astronomy (RA) project, with a focus on the XDM , KAT7 and then MeerKAT in South Africa, will be introduced and related to unexpected RFI . The picture will then be widened to unpack an understanding of RFI and ElectroMagnetic Compatibility (EMC) for RA and science projects more generally. Two European examples will be considered. A short diversion into the language that EMC engineers use in RFI and what RA presents as uv-plane data will be taken.

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JWST spots spectacular Neptune auroras

Astronomy News - Mon, 23/06/2025 - 10:02
The first direct evidence for auroras on Neptune has been spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Euclid mission reveals galaxy treasure trove

Astronomy News - Mon, 23/06/2025 - 10:02
The European Space Agency (ESA) has unveiled the first batch of survey data from its €1.4bn Euclid mission.

Square Kilometre Array releases low-frequency image

Astronomy News - Mon, 23/06/2025 - 10:02
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Observatory has released the first image from its partially built low-frequency telescope in Australia, known as SKA-Low.

This is the best time of the year to marvel at the Milky Way

Astronomy News - Mon, 23/06/2025 - 10:01

Milky Way viewing is at its best right now, especially if you’re in the southern hemisphere. Here's what to look out for, says Abigail Beall

Stunning first images show the power of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

Astronomy News - Mon, 23/06/2025 - 10:01

A powerful new telescope in Chile is set to transform astronomy, and its first pictures of stellar nurseries and galaxies have just been unveiled

First celestial image unveiled from revolutionary telescope

Astronomy News - Mon, 23/06/2025 - 10:01

The telescope should detect killer asteroids and may even find the ninth planet in our solar system.

NASA’s LRO Views ispace HAKUTO-R Mission 2 Moon Lander Impact Site

Astronomy News - Sat, 21/06/2025 - 10:44

On June 11, NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) captured photos of the site where the ispace Mission 2 SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon (RESILIENCE) lunar lander experienced a hard landing on June 5, 2025, UTC.

RESILIENCE lunar lander impact site, as seen by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) on June 11, 2025. The lander created a dark smudge surrounded by a subtle bright halo.Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University.

RESILIENCE was launched on Jan. 15 on a privately funded spacecraft.

LRO’s right Narrow Angle Camera (one in a suite of cameras known as LROC) captured the images featured here from about 50 miles above the surface of Mare Frigoris, a volcanic region interspersed with large-scale faults known as wrinkle ridges.

The dark smudge visible above the arrow in the photo formed as the vehicle impacted the surface, kicking up regolith — the rock and dust that make up Moon “soil.” The faint bright halo encircling the site resulted from low-angle regolith particles scouring the delicate surface.

This animation shows the RESILIENCE site before and after the impact. In the image, north is up. Looking from west to east, or left to right, the area pictured covers 2 miles.Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University. 

LRO is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Launched on June 18, 2009, LRO has collected a treasure trove of data with its seven powerful instruments, making an invaluable contribution to our knowledge about the Moon. NASA is returning to the Moon with commercial and international partners to expand human presence in space and bring back new knowledge and opportunities.

More on this story from Arizona State University’s LRO Camera website

Media Contact
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov

Lonnie Shekhtman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
lonnie.shekhtman@nasa.gov

Share Details Last Updated Jun 20, 2025 EditorMadison OlsonContactMolly Wassermolly.l.wasser@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms

Developing astronomers in Africa: ‘We wanted to create a discipline’

Astronomy News - Sat, 21/06/2025 - 10:41

Nature, Published online: 20 June 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01732-6

Astronomer Bernie Fanaroff helped to design South Africa’s plan to become a radioastronomy powerhouse — and it started with training the next generation.

Dead NASA satellite unexpectedly emits powerful radio pulse

Astronomy News - Sat, 21/06/2025 - 10:40

Astronomers are puzzled by a strong burst of radio waves traced back to a NASA satellite that had been inactive since the 1960s

Cosmic signal from the very early universe will help astronomers detect the first stars

Latest News - Fri, 20/06/2025 - 14:19

Understanding how the universe transitioned from darkness to light with the formation of the first stars and galaxies is a key turning point in the universe’s development, known as the Cosmic Dawn. However, even with the most powerful telescopes, we can’t directly observe these earliest stars, so determining their...

Cosmic signal from the very early universe will help astronomers detect the first stars

Astronomy News - Fri, 20/06/2025 - 11:52

Now, an international group of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge have shown that we will be able to learn about the masses of the earliest stars by studying a specific radio signal – created by hydrogen atoms filling the gaps between star-forming regions – originating just a hundred million years after the Big Bang.

By studying how the first stars and their remnants affected this signal, called the 21-centimetre signal, the researchers have shown that future radio telescopes will help us understand the very early universe, and how it transformed from a nearly homogeneous mass of mostly hydrogen to the incredible complexity we see today. Their results are reported in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“This is a unique opportunity to learn how the universe’s first light emerged from the darkness,” said co-author Professor Anastasia Fialkov from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “The transition from a cold, dark universe to one filled with stars is a story we’re only beginning to understand.”

The study of the universe’s most ancient stars hinges on the faint glow of the 21-centimetre signal, a subtle energy signal from over 13 billion years ago. This signal, influenced by the radiation from early stars and black holes, provides a rare window into the universe’s infancy.

Fialkov leads the theory group of REACH (the Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen). REACH is a radio antenna and is one of two major projects that could help us learn about the Cosmic Dawn and the Epoch of Reionisation, when the first stars reionised neutral hydrogen atoms in the universe.

Although REACH, which captures radio signals, is still in its calibration stage, it promises to reveal data about the early universe. Meanwhile, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA)—a massive array of antennas under construction—will map fluctuations in cosmic signals across vast regions of the sky.

Both projects are vital in probing the masses, luminosities, and distribution of the universe's earliest stars. In the current study, Fialkov – who is also a member of the SKA – and her collaborators developed a model that makes predictions for the 21-centimetre signal for both REACH and SKA, and found that the signal is sensitive to the masses of first stars.

“We are the first group to consistently model the dependence of the 21-centimetre signal of the masses of the first stars, including the impact of ultraviolet starlight and X-ray emissions from X-ray binaries produced when the first stars die,” said Fialkov, who is also a member of Cambridge’s Kavli Institute for Cosmology. “These insights are derived from simulations that integrate the primordial conditions of the universe, such as the hydrogen-helium composition produced by the Big Bang.”

In developing their theoretical model, the researchers studied how the 21-centimetre signal reacts to the mass distribution of the first stars, known as Population III stars. They found that previous studies have underestimated this connection as they did not account for the number and brightness of X-ray binaries – binary systems made of a normal star and a collapsed star – among Population III stars, and how they affect the 21-centimetre signal.

Unlike optical telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope, which capture vivid images, radio astronomy relies on statistical analysis of faint signals. REACH and SKA will not be able to image individual stars, but will instead provide information about entire populations of stars, X-ray binary systems and galaxies.

“It takes a bit of imagination to connect radio data to the story of the first stars, but the implications are profound,” said Fialkov.

“The predictions we are reporting have huge implications for our understanding of the nature of the very first stars in the Universe,” said co-author Dr Eloy de Lera Acedo, Principal Investigator of the REACH telescope and PI at Cambridge of the SKA development activities. “We show evidence that our radio telescopes can tell us details about the mass of those first stars and how these early lights may have been very different from today’s stars.

“Radio telescopes like REACH are promising to unlock the mysteries of the infant Universe, and these predictions are essential to guide the radio observations we are doing from the Karoo, in South Africa.”

The research was supported in part by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Anastasia Fialkov is a Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Eloy de Lera Acedo is an STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow and a Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge.

 

Reference:
T. Gessey-Jones et al. ‘Determination of the mass distribution of the first stars from the 21-cm signal.’ Nature Astronomy (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02575-x

Understanding how the universe transitioned from darkness to light with the formation of the first stars and galaxies is a key turning point in the universe’s development, known as the Cosmic Dawn. However, even with the most powerful telescopes, we can’t directly observe these earliest stars, so determining their properties is one of the biggest challenges in astronomy.

This is a unique opportunity to learn how the universe’s first light emerged from the darknessAnastasia FialkovESA/Webb, NASA, ESA, CSAThe image shows a deep galaxy field, featuring thousands of galaxies of various shapes and sizes


The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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A 16 Myr super-Neptune in Upper-Centaurus Lupus and a preliminary survey of transiting planets in Sco-Cen with TESS

Recent IoA Publications - Thu, 19/06/2025 - 10:35
arXiv:2502.00576v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Measuring the properties of planets younger than about 50 Myr helps to test different planetary formation and evolution models. NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has observed nearly the entire sky, including a wide range of star-forming regions and young stellar clusters, expanding our census of the newborn planet population. In this work, we present the discovery of the TIC 88785435 planetary system located in the Upper-Centaurus Lupus (UCL) region of the Scorpius-Centaurus OB association (Sco-Cen) and a preliminary survey of the planet population within Sco-Cen. TIC 88785435 is a pre-main sequence, K7V dwarf ($M_\star = 0.72M_\odot$, $R_\star = 0.91R_\odot$, $T_\mathrm{eff}$ = 3998K, V = 11.7 mag) located within the bounds of UCL. We investigate the distribution of rotation periods measured from the TESS long-cadence data and the Halpha and Li abundances from the spectra of TIC 88785435. TESS long-candence data reveal that TIC 88785435 hosts a transiting super-Neptune ($R_b = 5.03R_\oplus$, P = 10.51 days), TIC 88785435 b. Ground-based follow-up validates the planetary nature of TIC 88785435 b. Using the TESS data, we perform a preliminary survey to investigate how TIC 88785435 b compares to the population of newly born planets located within Sco-Cen.

A 16 Myr super-Neptune in Upper-Centaurus Lupus and a preliminary survey of transiting planets in Sco-Cen with TESS

Planetary systems - Thu, 19/06/2025 - 10:35
arXiv:2502.00576v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Measuring the properties of planets younger than about 50 Myr helps to test different planetary formation and evolution models. NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has observed nearly the entire sky, including a wide range of star-forming regions and young stellar clusters, expanding our census of the newborn planet population. In this work, we present the discovery of the TIC 88785435 planetary system located in the Upper-Centaurus Lupus (UCL) region of the Scorpius-Centaurus OB association (Sco-Cen) and a preliminary survey of the planet population within Sco-Cen. TIC 88785435 is a pre-main sequence, K7V dwarf ($M_\star = 0.72M_\odot$, $R_\star = 0.91R_\odot$, $T_\mathrm{eff}$ = 3998K, V = 11.7 mag) located within the bounds of UCL. We investigate the distribution of rotation periods measured from the TESS long-cadence data and the Halpha and Li abundances from the spectra of TIC 88785435. TESS long-candence data reveal that TIC 88785435 hosts a transiting super-Neptune ($R_b = 5.03R_\oplus$, P = 10.51 days), TIC 88785435 b. Ground-based follow-up validates the planetary nature of TIC 88785435 b. Using the TESS data, we perform a preliminary survey to investigate how TIC 88785435 b compares to the population of newly born planets located within Sco-Cen.

Infall-driven gravitational instability in accretion discs

Planetary systems - Thu, 19/06/2025 - 10:25
arXiv:2506.13701v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Gravitational instability (GI) is typically studied in cooling-dominated discs, often modelled using simplified prescriptions such as $\beta$-cooling. In this paper, we investigate the onset and evolution of GI in accretion discs subject to continuous mass injection, combining 1D and 3D numerical simulations. We explore an alternative self-regulation mechanism in which mass replenishment drives the system toward marginal stability $Q\sim 1$. In this regime, the disc establishes a steady-state disc-to-star mass ratio, balancing the mass transported to the central object with that added to the disc. Our 3D simulations reveal that the general scaling predicted from the linear theory are respected, however there are important difference compared to the cooling case in terms of morphology and pattern speed. Unlike the flocculent spirals seen in cooling-driven instability, the power is concentrated towards the dominant modes in infall-driven spirals. Additionally, spiral waves generate at the mass injection location, and propagate at constant pattern speed, unlike in the cooling case. This suggests a fundamental difference in how mass-regulated and cooling-regulated discs behave and transport angular momentum.